Pathway to Japanese Literature

Part One

A transparently eerie voice quivered up from the far, far depths of the earth, crawling all the way to the mouth of the Inclined Shaft.

“Buddhaaaaa… saaaaaama… Yooooooi… Yoooooi… Old Pit Mouth heeere… Yiiiii… Yoooooo… Yiiii… Yiiiii…”

The voice having caught his ears, Fukutarō abruptly halted his steps and turned to peer into the darkness behind him.

That had been a strange custom preserved in this coal mining region since time immemorial.

When someone dies in the mine interior, the corpse is never handed over to priests or bereaved families on the spot. When several comrades rush to the scene, hoisting it onto stretchers or trolleys, they carry it out toward the pit mouth with slow, deliberate steps—threading through coal cars bustling back and forth—but each time they pass a corner or critical juncture along the way, one of those accompanying them calls out the location’s name in the clearest, highest voice possible, instructing the corpse as they proceed. After spending a long time carrying it out to the pit mouth in this manner, they brought it to the medical office for an autopsy, and only then handed it over to priests or bereaved family members.

Those who died in the coal mine left their souls there.
Believing themselves still collapsed mid-task, they remained unaware their bodies had been carried outside.
Thus when others went to work at that site, there were times when those souls took offense and interfered.
Phantom drafts, blue flames, and ghosts would manifest to grab pickaxe tips, extinguish safety lamps, and prevent explosions from detonating.
In crueler instances, [the souls] might even drop hard coal to kill [miners], so to prevent such occurrences, [they] thoroughly instructed the corpse about the path along which it was being carried out—ensuring no lingering attachments remained… This was said to be the origin of such customs, and for miners buried year-round in darkness’s depths, it seemed utterly logical—a ritual so poignant it brought tears.

The corpse now being carried out was that of a young miner named Isao, who had been working at the preserved coal pillar worksite near the old pit mouth. Though Isao hadn’t been under Fukutarō’s command—despite being a sharp and reliable worker—he had been unexpectedly struck by a roof collapse and shattered to pieces; Fukutarō had just been told this by a passing miner. The voice calling out belonged to an older miner named Kichisaburō; this man had once believed himself blown up and killed at the mine’s bottom during a massive explosion in these mountains, but when he shortly regained consciousness, he found himself carried out to a sun-blazed grassland where doctors were tending to him—a discovery so startling it made him faint once more. So since then, he seemed to have become even more deeply ensnared by this superstition; whenever a corpse appeared, he would rush over, set aside his work, and take on this role of caller—which was why his comrades had come to call him Anoyo no Kichi.

Kichisaburō’s voice was not only much higher-pitched than usual—transparent like a woman’s—but also, with his mouth pressed close to the tattered corpse’s ear, strained desperately to call out to the dead soul in earnest; far more penetrating than the voices of any monks nearby… it produced an indescribably mournful reverberation that seemed to seep through the earth’s depths—infinite darkness and all—to the farthest reaches of the underworld, trembling now distant, now near.

“Here we aaare… Pump Station heeere… Yooooooi… Yiiiii… Yiiii… Yiiiii…”

Fukutarō, who had been listening intently to the voice, suddenly shuddered violently—for some reason—and glanced around. As he listened to Kichisaburō’s piercing, far-off cries, Fukutarō came to feel an oppressive presence—as though every last being frozen in the darkness around him were pressing closer, each one cursing their own lives into nothingness through endless repetition of shriveling curses…

Fukutarō had not been such a nervous man by nature. After graduating from industrial school, through roughly three years of working honestly and single-mindedly as a foreman in this coal mine, he had not only become fully accustomed to the subterranean darkness—even feeling a nostalgic familiarity akin to his birthplace—but also, whether due to his slow-witted nature from birth, remained just as insensate toward considerable dangers he faced, rarely lapsing into sentimental moods.

Yet since taking a wife around last year’s end, he had dimly become aware—in his slow-witted way—that his physical condition had grown awkwardly out of sorts; as what seemed like a weakening of his vitality progressed, all manner of trivial matters had begun to weigh on him.
Particularly now—saddled with eighteen hours of nonstop work from first to second shift—he was likely especially exhausted.
His head had grown strangely clear, and an indescribable eeriness seemed to close in on him from every direction in the darkness until he could bear it no longer.

Will I too, before long, end up being called in such a feeble voice…?

…What if the six o’clock coal car—the one that just now carried Genji the carpenter foreman up the inclined shaft mouth before me—were to snap its haulage rope and come reversing back down…?

...Or isn’t the hard coal above my head about to come crashing down any moment now….

As these unpleasant premonitions began assaulting him one after another—each starting to feel like undeniable fact—Fukutarō found himself frozen in the safety lamp’s faint light before he knew it.

Then—at the very center of that swirling vortex of ominous premonitions—what rose first and foremost was wife Osaku’s pale face.

Osaku was four or five years older than Fukutarō, but having taught him—a good-natured man who had known nothing—the ways of being human for the first time, she now stood in his eyes as his sole goddess, irreplaceable in heaven or on earth…… Thus, when Osaku’s round face—pale with collar makeup and so enchantingly coquettish she might have been a splendid fairy rather than a mother or sister—appeared smiling like a ghost he would never meet again in the darkness before his nose, Fukutarō nearly staggered forward on unsteady legs.
While recalling all manner of fateful circumstances from his first meeting with Osaku onward, he let out a relieved sigh—as though realizing it only now.

Osaku was not originally a woman Fukutarō had taken an interest in.
Around the time Fukutarō first came to these mountains, Osaku had taken lodging at an udon shop in the town below—a drifter in a white apron whose round, voluptuous figure and innate boldness had allowed her to twist various men around her finger. Among them was a single middle-aged carpenter foreman nicknamed Chanchan no Genji, who devoted himself so earnestly his peers laughed at him, pouring every last coin he had into her. But after squeezing him dry, Osaku coldly cast him aside without another glance.
Perhaps this was what they called fate? From that time onward, Fukutarō—who would only occasionally come to eat udon and had never once touched alcohol—seemed to have unwittingly captured Osaku’s heart with his timid, boyish demeanor.
At the beginning of last winter, after quitting the udon shop, she moved straight into Fukutarō’s self-catering foreman’s shed along with her bankbook passbook, becoming an uninvited wife through sheer force of will.

Even the normally insensitive Fukutarō was not a little taken aback at the time.
In the presence of Osaku, who understood everything, he could only sit rigidly formal, fidgeting like an infant. Yet even as days passed with him unsure how to act, Fukutarō had unconsciously begun hurrying to finish his work so he could return to see Osaku’s pale face.
Every morning when he woke up, not only was he overjoyed—almost guiltily so—to find the house tidied spotlessly unlike his self-catering days, with meals neatly prepared by his bedside, but also when he returned exhausted each evening, trudging wearily into the dim miners’ shed, seeing only his own house brightly lit by a lamp filled him with such indescribable gratitude that his chest swelled and tears nearly spilled forth.
Moreover, when he simultaneously recalled that he had to rise at four the next morning and enter the mine for the first shift, Fukutarō found himself filled with unbearable unpleasantness and once again forced to slump powerlessly.

Thus, Fukutarō’s simple heart was rapidly torn from the subterranean darkness in barely half a month.
And so Fukutarō—in this coal mine where such things were rare—was shrinking smaller and smaller each day into Osaku’s soft, lovely palms. Yet with this came the fact that his relationship with her had become the talk of the entire mine; daily informed of this reality and subjected to relentless teasing whenever anyone approached him, he found himself thoroughly worn down.
Moreover, even among such teasing remarks, being earnestly admonished with “Genji resents you” was what Fukutarō—being a good-natured man—found most unbearable.

“Genji’s three steps behind when it comes to work, yet all he’s got is a silver tongue—a smooth-talking schemer whose flattery runs deeper than you’d think.”
“That bastard’s been in prison for fraud and gambling—every damn thing he does reeks of trickery! Cross him, and they say you’ll vanish in these mines by his hand.”
“Everyone knows he’s rotten enough for such cowardly deeds.”
“Plenty swear it’s his doing, but he kills so careful-like in the dark—not a scrap of proof left behind.”
“First off, he’s slippery as a sewer rat—sucking up to the mine director’s lot—so he’s dodged trouble clean so far. But you best watch your back.”
“No tellin’ what foul revenge he’ll cook up.”
“Hell, Osaku-don’s whole nest egg? Every copper came from Genji’s pockets!”

This was not the first or second time Fukutarō had received earnest advice from well-meaning peers, but whenever subjected to such talk, the slow-witted man would only fidget anxiously, overwhelmed with worry and utterly at a loss for how to guard against it—leaving him thoroughly troubled.

“Even if you say that… that’s not something I’d know anything about.”

he would grow teary-eyed and blush,

“I wonder if Genji’s really such a bad person…”

heaving sighs and putting on a dreamy-eyed look, so even those who went out of their way to kindly advise him often ended up losing their momentum.

But the problem didn’t end there.
Fukutarō realized that Genji’s resentment toward him stemmed not solely from matters involving Osaku.
He had to be told repeatedly—over and over—that graver, more significant reasons existed beyond that.

This was indeed the case.

By nature, Fukutarō was slow-witted in all matters yet oddly dexterous with his hands—among such skills, he loved tinkering with carpenter’s tools more than three square meals a day.
Even when entering industrial school, though he had initially aspired to study architecture, his deceased parents persuaded him to reluctantly switch to mining—a field he disliked—which finally allowed him to receive tuition support from the coal mine. Yet he still kept a full set of carpenter’s tools he had scrimped and saved to collect, neatly stored in his shed’s closet; no matter how exhausted he was, if asked, he would immediately shoulder that toolbox and set out.
Thus his carpentry work in the mine interior—far surpassing that of Genji, the professional—earned considerable acclaim, for he poured obsessive care into every task, resulting in sturdy structures.
In fact, just last summer, Genji had made repairs to what could be called the mine’s main artery—the inclined shaft entrance Fukutarō had just passed through. But soon after, while Genji lay bedridden with a cold, the ceiling beam sagged under its weight until it nearly grazed the coal car’s edge. Unaware, two miners riding a car had their heads smashed off in the darkness.
Thereupon, when Fukutarō was urgently asked to take charge and make adjustments, he secured the structure at a height of about one shaku above the coal car’s edge. At that moment, it became starkly clear to the officials present that had Genji not stolen materials and done such slipshod work, they could have raised it two shaku higher still.

There was no way Fukutarō’s conspicuous workmanship would not have become known throughout the coal mine.
And at the same time, there was no way Genji—the professional—would not resent him.

Thus, Genji had been thoroughly humiliated in his work by a mere greenhorn, and even the woman he had poured money into had been taken from him—leaving him in a position where he could not back down without exacting revenge. Yet was this due to the very trait that earned him the moniker “Chanchan no Genji,” or rather because he was far more cunning than anyone realized?
Even when mocked as a coward by the quick-tempered miners, Genji not only feigned ignorance—from that point onward, whenever he encountered Fukutarō, he would bob his head obsequiously and begin making every effort to ingratiate himself.

As Genji’s attitude grew increasingly noticeable, the others became ever more suspicious of his intentions.
……Just you wait—Genji’ll do something.
They began watching with that peculiar mining-town fascination—cruel-edged anticipation of Genji making a move against Fukutarō and Osaku… Yet through it all, the very Fukutarō couple at the heart of it showed not the slightest concern, making everyone’s eyes widen further still.
The good-natured Fukutarō would beam at Genji with the same unreserved smile he gave everyone else, while Osaku—ever herself—

“What could that coward Genji possibly do?”

She seemed to dismiss him with a brash tone that stopped just short of outright declaration.
Not only did she modify her previous white apron into a fiery red one and revive the pure white collar makeup from her udon shop days, but she also began using that makeup and red apron to go out every single day to meet Fukutarō halfway on his return.
Meanwhile, ever since assisting at the celebration for the mine director’s newly built residence, she had been ingratiating herself with his young second wife—visiting frequently to pay respects as if countering Genji’s influence—and bringing back things like the director’s worn-out shirts and old shoes for Fukutarō. By ostentatiously demonstrating her devotion to him this way, the gossip throughout the coal mine only grew more tense.

Fukutarō stood motionless at the entrance to the inclined shaft, the safety lamp held in his hand casting its light around him as he found himself recalling—one after another, without intention—those rumors and countless memories.
Moreover, among all these matters, he had never once concerned himself with anything related to Genji until this very moment—driven by that persistent sense of “...it’s not my fault...”—but now, with Osaku’s pale face materializing vividly before his eyes alongside the earnest expressions and urgent tones of those who had warned him, those rumors and whispers began to seem strangely believable.

The very man in question, Genji, rode inside a new empty container near the middle of some ten coal cars that had just ascended—hunched over with his back rounded as if to avoid striking his head against the low ceiling, swaying within the faint light reflected from the rock walls above.
Though the back emblem on his work coat differed from the usual ※ (a large full-width “┐” symbol marking company affiliation), there remained no mistaking Genji’s retreating figure: through the torn armpit of that coat peeked a military-striped undershirt, while his gleaming close-cropped hair shone like polished metal.
Fukutarō—who had once more recalled Genji’s cowering form clutching its head alongside Osaku’s pale visage—felt less terror than an inexplicable remorse… He could do nothing but accept how natural it was for Genji to resent him.
Toward the inclined shaft’s darkness that had swallowed Genji’s form, he found himself gripped by an irrepressible urge—to bow his head in secret apology no one would witness.

However, Fukutarō soon came to feel that all these memories and sentimental emotions were merely his own nerves growing unnaturally sharp in the pitch darkness, so he violently shook his head from side to side to dispel every last trace of those absurd delusions. As he did so, the light from the safety lamp in his left hand began whirling wildly, causing the jagged contours of the rock wall before him to take on what seemed like the gaunt visage of Genji. Moreover, he noticed droplets oozing from between the rock’s tightly clenched lips—each one glistening with a sinister black sheen as though spitting blood—resembling the countenance of someone struck down in bitter resentment.

However, upon seeing those drops of black water, Fukutarō was made to recall something else entirely, and he found himself shuddering involuntarily.

Fukutarō had long known that the water droplets seeping from between the rocks bizarrely maintained a temperature of around sixty degrees Celsius.
This was because remnant fire from the recent major explosion still burned in the deepest recesses of fissures within the coal seams—heating the bedrock through which the water passed... Moreover, though the mine management left it unattended as beyond remedy and continued sending miners inside regardless, it had already become perfectly clear that as this subterranean heat gradually intensified while gas accumulated within the tunnels, another explosion would inevitably occur.
Thus, entering this coal mine was truly a matter of life and death; however, apart from a select few executives, only Genji—the carpenter foreman who had overheard their discussions—knew this fact.
However, that secret had somehow leaked from Genji’s mouth to Osaku’s ears, and Fukutarō had in turn been told of it covertly by Osaku in their pillow talk—so,

“Should we move to another coal mine right now?
“Or how about we go into town and start an udon shop or something?”

In response to what Osaku had said at that time, Fukutarō was now made to vividly recall how he had nodded in earnest agreement.
And so, gripped by the desperate resolve that he would never set foot in such a dangerous place again after today, he timidly glanced around in all directions.

“Copying Room (Office) zooo… Eeeeyoooo… Eeeyo… Oooeeeee…”

The call crept into Fukutarō’s ears—as if whispered right before his nose… and yet again like a voice from the far, far depths of the underworld.

Urged on by the voice, Fukutarō hunched over and briskly climbed up the nearly thirty-degree steep slope at the bottom of the Inclined Shaft for about twenty-five meters.
Then, as the Inclined Shaft curved slightly to the right and reached a section facing due west, he began to straighten his back a little.

……It was at that moment.

Fukutarō saw crimson sparks streaming through the lacquer-black void right before his nose.
The instant Fukutarō saw that,

“On the equinox’s very day, a crimson sunset sinks right in front of the Inclined Shaft, I tell ya.”
“Namu… Namu… Namu…”

He thought he recalled the face of the old miner who had told him this, but soon a thunderous roar erupted all around him. As he felt his entire body enveloped in suffocating dust, his consciousness slipped away.

……He lost all understanding.

Midst

“They say Fukutarō cheated death.”

“The foreman really went through something terrible, huh.”

People entering from the front entrance while exchanging such remarks…

“How on earth did he manage to survive?”

“Maybe Dokonjin-sama lent a hand…”

With the crowd of men and women coming to offer their sympathies, Fukutarō’s shed—which had only two rooms—became completely packed.

In the very center sat Fukutarō, his head wrapped in a scrap of white cloth and clad only in a summer kimono, dazed and utterly drained of vigor. No matter what anyone asked, he could muster no reply, merely nodding feebly in vague acknowledgment.

In truth, Fukutarō did not understand why he failed to die.
The small split wound stinging at his crown—no matter how he thought—he could not recall when, where, or how it had formed.

According to those who gathered, Fukutarō had been wedged into a narrow gap beneath an enormous hard coal lump after four cars reversing down the 1,500-shaku Inclined Shaft derailed and piled up. His face smeared with blood and eyes wide open, he reportedly sat beneath that coal slab.
Since this happened just before the six o’clock shift change, dozens of second-shift miners about to enter from the thirty-ken-distant haulage way came rushing at the mountain-shaking roar as if shouting “Disaster!”
A growing crowd of onlookers joined them, noisily clamoring with half-hearted concern and morbid curiosity until the narrow tunnel churned like a washing tub—until Fukutarō’s booted leg was found beneath derailed wheels alongside his safety lamp’s glow, sparking greater uproar.
Genji the carpenter foreman finally arrived to lead the rescue. Replacing coal lumps and cars with pit props, they dug Fukutarō out. Finding him breathing, they carried him to his nearby shed. As they lit lamps and gave first aid, Fukutarō—fortunate to have only a scalp laceration—soon regained consciousness.
Looking around at the crowd with shocked eyes, he jerked upright and turned to Genji sitting before him,

“Where is this place?”

he had asked.

Everyone instinctively let out a collective “Whoa!” at the sight.
The crowd packed around the entrance—those who had been worried about Fukutarō’s condition—heaved sighs of relief upon hearing his voice. But two or three among them were already guffawing as they...

“Where’d ya think this is?
“Ain’t this your own damn house?”

Though they told him this, Fukutarō still didn’t seem to grasp it, his eyes intently roving over the faces of his fellow miners.
Osaku, who had been tending to him, began sniffling tearfully as she wiped his face—filthy with sweat, blood, mud, and splashed water—using a damp cloth. Yet Fukutarō kept his bewildered gaze fixed on the lamp’s light, prompting someone behind them to clutch their belly and burst out laughing while—

“Still don’t get it?”

“Hey there, Anoyo’s Kichi!”
“Why don’t you come here and call out for him?”
“Your hoooouuuse zooo… Eeeeyoooo… Eeeyo… like thaaaat…”

When someone mimicked Kichisaburō’s voice, everyone burst out laughing in unison.
However, even so, Fukutarō continued wearing an uncomprehending expression as if mimicking,

*“Anoyo… Anoyo…”*

When he muttered this, everyone was reportedly sent into helpless fits of laughter.

Meanwhile, a group from the coal mine’s office—the personnel manager, staff, haulage foreman, and pit supervisors—had rushed over and conducted a perfunctory investigation of the scene. According to their report, Fukutarō had apparently been in a hurry to return home; rather than taking the detour via the haulage way, he had violated regulations and stepped into the Inclined Shaft.
Moreover, just before the six o’clock shift change, ten coal cars had not yet finished ascending the Inclined Shaft when Fukutarō began climbing on foot from the landing yard (shaft entrance), following closely behind them. Unfortunately, the iron rod lodged in the serrated coupling of the seventh car suddenly came loose from the sixth car’s coupler ring. Four connected coal cars reversed down the slope and derailed precisely at the curve where Fukutarō had stepped—piling atop one another. Had this not occurred, Fukutarō would surely have been utterly crushed within the tunnel narrowed by lateral pressure.

However, the rails laid in the mine tunnel for coal cars were inherently crude and uneven, so it was far from uncommon for coupling rods to snap or detach, or for cables to fray and break at their knots. Especially since two miners had recently perished at the Inclined Shaft’s entrance, riding coal cars had been strictly prohibited out of safety concerns—so not a single soul could imagine that someone might have been riding one of those cars, spotted Fukutarō ascending, and deliberately pulled out the coupling pin… or anything of that sort. As for Fukutarō—Genji’s prime target—not only had he completely forgotten who might have been aboard that coal car in the aftermath of such a violent blow, but he could no longer clearly recall why he himself had been walking through the Inclined Shaft in the first place. By the time he finally regained enough composure to process everyone’s accounts, he found himself accepting their version of events without question—left gaping in astonishment, dismay, and utter bewilderment.

Given such circumstances, the cause of the incident ultimately remained entirely unknown, and with Fukutarō’s accident being deemed self-inflicted misfortune, everything unraveled uneventfully.
The coal mine doctor who had returned from elsewhere left chuckling to himself upon seeing how minor Fukutarō’s injury was. As a result, the gathered crowd became completely lighthearted and could only marvel endlessly at Fukutarō’s uncanny luck.
And so it came to pass that,

“It’s ’cause you’ve been pamperin’ him too much—that’s why Mr. Fukutarō went rushin’ home, I tell ya!”

The crowd began teasing Osaku, but even the worldly-wise Osaku—far from deflecting their jests—could only turn crimson and flee through the back door without managing a retort.

However, even so, Osaku seemed quite happy.
Straightaway, she brought about two shō of sake from the mess hall and, without delay, set it out before everyone with bowls—still cold as it was.
Then, feeling obliged to match her gesture, others emerged carrying their own measures—five gō here, one shō there—in their hands.
With groups of women bringing homemade side dishes and leftover dried goods to light charcoal braziers, by the time everything had settled down past eleven, Fukutarō’s cramped shed transformed into the unlikely scene of a drinking fest.

“Here’s to Mr. Foreman…”

“Hey.
“Fuku.”
“Here’s to you!”

“As for your life being spared, well—and that other matter too.”
“Hahaha…”

Such lively greetings rapidly brightened the room.
As more and more people came bringing cups to Fukutarō, Genji—the carpenter foreman who had been fussing over him from the start—pressed a cup upon him with particular persistence. Fukutarō, never one for drink, found himself at a loss to escape.

“I can’t drink it all—can’t drink it all,” he kept insisting while fending them off.

“Today’s an exception,” Genji pressed with uncharacteristic formality, refusing to yield.

Just then Osaku cut in from the side:

“Fuku-san here...”
“It’s in his blood from his parents, see.”
“Once liquor gets in him, he turns wild—they’ve strictly ordered him not to touch a single drop.”
“Please don’t take offense now, Genji-san.”

After apologizing profusely, she finally got only Genji to withdraw his cup, but the others roughly shoved Osaku aside as if taking out their frustration on Genji.

“No no!”
“Even if Genji agrees, I won’t.”
“Ain’t Fukutarō the only one who goes crazy after drinking.”
“I, who’s like a father to him, am looking after him—don’t you worry.”

Shouting things like “this and that,” they forced his mouth open and made him drink the pungent reheated sake, so Fukutarō’s face turned beet red in an instant, as if about to burst.
Quiet by nature, he grew increasingly timid, retreating while evading the sake cups until he collapsed sideways before the half-opened sliding door of the closet in the room’s corner, his tear-filled eyes blinking wide open and shut as he pressed his palms together as if praying to the cups.

The gathered crowd seemed satisfied now that their honoree had collapsed drunk.
Those who had been thrusting cups upon him finally ceased, and afterward, everyone freely poured drinks for one another.
In their midst, Osaku became the sole center of attention; dragged bodily into the middle, she was handed cups from all directions and made to pour drinks—until before anyone knew it, she herself got thoroughly drunk.
When she rolled up her white, greasy arms to the shoulders, she began indiscriminately exuding charm in a shrill voice.

“Come on, bring ’em here! Tea bowls, rice bowls—whatever’ll do!”

“Ha ha ha! Osaku’s lit up proper now, ain’t she!”

“That crow what just cawed’s done had its laugh already.”
“Ha ha ha!”

“Hey there, foul-mouth! How ’bout pourin’ me a cup?”

“Alright then! Let’s go with this glass!”

“Aw... this’s too much... who’d take a cold sake cup, I tell ya!”

“Now now.”
“Well now—long time no see, Osaku!”
“Even hitched to a young husband, you ain’t witherin’ one bit!”

“As if I’d ever quit!”
“Five or ten... younger they come, better they suit me!”

“Ha ha ha ha! What’s this about a red apron being for someone’s sake?”
“How should I know? Must be for my son and daughter, I suppose.”
“Whoa!”

“This is too much!”
“Where’s Fukutarō gone off to, I tell ya?”
“He’s lying there in front of the closet like a dead man.”
“Ha ha.”

“I see.”
“He’s dead! He’s dead!”
“Dead like an octopus with its arms splayed out!”
“Those who die from drink ain’t nothin’ but minnows, I tell ya!”

“Better than dyin’ under a coal car.”

“Even better if it’s under Osaku!”

“Ha ha ha ha!”

“Hey! Everyone, lend a hand! Lend a hand! Hurry now! Hurry now!”

As they shouted this, everyone noisily crowded around Osaku who clutched a cup. Then just as they’d once cheered her at the udon shop, they clapped hands in rhythm and began chanting the Nayabushi song:

“Tie that white yumojiru in a Shimada hey!
The bastard who made us buy that red yumojiru—
What scum from what dump—
Donyatsu donyatsu, what bastard’s that?”

“Oooaaaah—aaaaah—”

“Alright…”

As the song was ending or not yet ended, Osaku gulped down the cup of cold sake and stood up.

“If you’re going to tease me like that, then I’ll just have to make myself a bit younger too!”

As she said this, she picked up someone’s hand towel that had fallen there and tied it into a topknot like an older sister’s. Then she swiftly adjusted her hem and flipped up the notorious red apron high, causing everyone to raise a thunderous battle cry of cheers in unison.

“...Journeying Dance! Journeying Dance!...”

Two or three men had shouted, but Osaku glared around at them as she stretched out her white arm and turned up the lamp’s wick until it emitted soot.

“Genji-san. Supply Master Genji-san… Oh?… Where ever could Genji-san have gone off to, I wonder?”

The thunderous cheers—so loud they seemed ready to shatter—shook the shed once more even before her voice had fully faded, but this time, as if severed by a blade, the noise snapped into perfect silence.

Everyone had sensed by now that Osaku meant to perform the Journey Dance she’d mastered during her udon shop days. Yet none could have imagined she’d instead choose to partner with Genji—the man now at the heart of the trouble. Was this irony or sheer audacity? Though they’d erupted in cheers moments before, even these hardened men found their rough courage stripped away by Osaku’s razor-edged inspiration—and in the next breath, the shed fell as silent as water frozen mid-splash. Struck by the sudden certainty that blood would soon rain down…

However, Osaku remained utterly unperturbed.
She stood rigidly in the center, fixing her glazed eyes within the lamp’s bright glow while furtively peering around at the dark corners of the room.

“...Mr. Genji.”
“Won’t you come out?”
“It’s not as if you and I are strangers, now is it?”

Everyone finally swallowed their dry breath and fell utterly silent.
Amidst them, someone let out a stifled laugh, but this only made the shed’s silence grow all the more piercing.

“Oh, how disgusting you are.”
“You were right there just now, though.”
“Did you run off to take a piss?”

While muttering this, Osaku briefly glanced back toward the darkness at the front.
Then everyone, as if drawn in, turned to look in the same direction as Osaku, but outside, not even a cough resembling Genji’s could be heard.

The supply master Genji had shrunk down and hidden in the direction opposite to everyone’s gazes. Behind a newspaper-covered screen set up before the closet at the back of the room, crouched stealthily, he intently watched Fukutarō’s face before him laboring to breathe through his shoulders. The face that had been flushed crimson until just moments ago was gradually paling, transforming into a ghastly, haggard expression—like that of a roadside corpse with eyes wide open—and he watched in horrified fascination as this change unfolded.

Below.

Fukutarō lay in front of the closet from the very beginning, his splitting head held firmly in both hands.
Overwhelmed by the excessive remedial sake he’d been forced to drink unawares, his chest grew so tight he couldn’t breathe for some time.
The pulsing of thick blood vessels near his ears throbbed as if scraped by a razor’s edge. Trapped between being unable to sleep or rise, fragments of childhood memories—ones never before recalled—now surfaced vividly: unexpected fields, blinding sunset skies, his father’s nostalgic profile, his mother’s retreating figure. These fractured visions alternated sharply behind his clenched eyelids as he endured them motionless, clamping each ephemeral scene within his mind’s darkness.

However, as that drunken stupor gradually began to fade and his breathing grew easier, Fukutarō started to feel a pain in the core of his brain deep within the depths of his eyeballs—a pain as though it were parched and drying out.
As this sensation grew, his eyelids somehow felt heavier… A shiver ran down his spine. Unconsciously, he cracked his eyes open and noticed—through the dim silhouette of someone’s back sitting barely six inches before his eyeballs—a grotesque vision unlike anything before, vividly clear yet eerily indescribable, had begun to materialize.
And as this phantom—utterly unexpected to Fukutarō—began depicting scenes of extreme gravity and pathos, shifting soundlessly like a Western filmstrip, Fukutarō found himself compelled to stare fixedly at it with a strange sensation akin to being under hypnosis.

……The first part of the phantom vision to appear was a section of the rock wall illuminated by the reddish-brown light of a safety lamp.

It was none other than the grave reenactment of memory—the jagged contours of the terrifying rock wall Fukutarō had observed when stopping just before his disaster at the Inclined Shaft’s entrance, now once more vividly depicted by his half-numbed brain.
A visage of bitter resentment—eyes tightly shut, teeth clenched—eternally frozen like Genji’s emaciated death mask… Yet… the speed at which the black, blood-like droplets seeped from between lips pressed into a thin line and trickled downward bore no resemblance to anything in the real world.

This too seemed governed by Fukutarō’s paralyzed brain—a terrifying, indescribable dripping that moved slowly, ever so slowly, akin to a bullet captured by a high-speed camera.

When first that black droplet swelled thickly from the edge of the rock’s horizontal lip, its bulging surface immediately caught the light of the safety lamp held in Fukutarō’s hand and glittered golden.
And then, even more slowly than a crawling insect… at a pace where it was nearly impossible to tell whether it had stopped or was still moving… it crawled downward along the lip.
And when it reached the deep, painfully shadowed edge beneath the lip, it paused there briefly. Gradually swelling into a perfectly round droplet, it simultaneously began to reflect the dim safety lamp’s light—pale, small, and sharp.
Once it formed into a perfectly round droplet, like a full moon floating in midair, it began to descend slowly, slowly down through the vertical space while gently rotating.
The droplet’s speed gradually increased until it sank slowly, slowly into the shadows of shallow grooves dug into both sides of the tunnel, still rotating like a full moon while emitting an intensely vivid rainbow light… Just as one thought this, another pitch-black, perfectly round droplet detached from the rock’s lip and hung in space, quietly glimmering as if chasing after the first.

……The terrifying intensity……the eerie dread…….

Fukutarō’s eyes gaped so wide they turned stark white before he knew it.
His lips hung slackly agape, and at the tip of his tongue curled back within, a faint quiver trembled—an uncanny shudder welling up from the depths of his gut.

At that moment, Osaku began dancing with Anoyo no Kichi.
A thunderous roar of cheers for the Journey Dance exploded through every corner of the shed.

Hearing this, Genji started and peered into the room from behind the screen—only to immediately turn back as if pulled by an invisible force, leaning his upper body toward Fukutarō’s face.
In the dim reddish-yellow lamplight, he stared unblinking at Fukutarō’s features—growing paler and more painfully contorted with each passing moment—his own breath held tight and heart pounding violently.

"...I wonder if this bastard's really going to die... Maybe that head wound's deeper than they thought—could the doctor have misjudged it?... If only he'd just drop dead..."

While clinging to these thoughts...

Yet Fukutarō naturally remained oblivious to Genji's machinations.
No—utterly unaware that Genji's face, twisted with malice, now hovered inches from his nose, he kept staring into the abyssal darkness conjured by his own mind, enduring unfathomable dread as his entire body petrified into rigidity.

Before Fukutarō’s eyes, the same scene of darkness persisted unbroken. Yet within that void, whenever golden-brown light filtered through the safety lamp’s mesh—flickering slowly or vanishing soundlessly—it could only be a shard of memory: Fukutarō stepping from the Inclined Shaft’s mouth onto the thirty-degree slope, reanimated before him. For every jagged rock face illuminated by that tenuous glow was one he’d long grown familiar with...

But soon after that golden-brown light had completely vanished and darkness returned, a red light flickered far, far off in that darkness.

It was a reenactment of the impression of the red light Fukutarō had glimpsed just before being caught between the coal car and the roof collapse.
At the time, he had assumed it was the glow of the setting sun sinking into the mine entrance—precisely why its true nature had remained unknown and forgotten—but now, as that momentary impression repeated itself before his eyes, the light’s identity became all too vividly clear.

It was none other than the light of sparks from four derailed coal cars—each weighing eight hundred *kin*, propelled by their mass along a fifteen-hundred-*shaku* descent at a near-thirty-degree incline—hurtling in reverse at speeds nearing thirty *ri* as their wheels ground against the rails.
Moreover, the speed at which those wheels rotated—still warped by Fukutarō’s half-paralyzed brain—had transformed into a sluggish crawl, like insects inching forward or frames of high-speed film played in slow motion. As he stared transfixed, this vision advanced upon him with indescribable terror and an oppressive weight that crushed his very breath.

Around each of the sixteen wheels on both sides of the coal car, countless sparks gushing from the rails twisted like crimson serpents, undulating as they coiled. Solemnly rotating forward while swaying like images in a magic lantern, they illuminated the folds of rock walls pressing against both sides of the coal cars. When at last that fiery procession advanced one after another onto the curved rail joints before Fukutarō's eyes, the first coal car—lifted by undulating rails—passed through at slightly reduced speed, tilting halfway as it went. Then the second coal car that had charged up from behind was pushed back by the lead car, raising its head like a silkworm probing the air before floating unsteadily upward alongside other cars. Crushing through low ceilings and opposite rock walls piece by piece, they bore down on Fukutarō. Dumping a heavy load of wet coal dust onto his rigidly crouched chest and knocking him flat on his backside, four twisted coal cars still linked together drifted through eye-level space like enchanted boxes. Gradually forming an irregular triangular space as they descended groundward, they seemed almost to shield Fukutarō's body. All the while his safety lamp—half-buried in coal dust—emitted sporadic blue glows that flickered unceasingly.

However, as the safety lamp’s light shifted back to a reddish, sooty hue, it gradually darkened until it seemed to vanish entirely into pitch-blackness.
For at that moment, countless particles of stone dust had begun to fall from above Fukutarō’s head, overlapping in black cotton-snow-like wave patterns as they drifted gently downward.
As this black cotton-snow accumulated around Fukutarō’s waist, it gradually lightened until—before he knew it—the snowfall had subsided into silence. Then, from beyond that stillness, emerged a massive slab of hard coal weighing thousands of *kan*, concealed until now within the ceiling cavity. Like machinery in an ironworks, it began descending inch by inch, steadily gaining speed as it drew nearer to Fukutarō’s head.
And when at last the flat surface of that hard coal came to rest upon the three coal cars encircling Fukutarō’s front and back—crushing thick Korean pine planks inch by inch before halting perfectly—no sooner had it done so than another torrent of earth came cascading down outside the coal cars.
From beneath the car frame mounded upward, billowing clouds of earth began to swirl lazily inward, completely obscuring the safety lamp’s light.

At that moment, Fukutarō thought he had briefly lost consciousness and closed his eyes.
Yet that moment felt nearly identical to what one would call an instant in the real world—and in the very next moment, as consciousness returned, Fukutarō flung open his stinging eyes wide, lips agape, and discovered himself within the void of coal cars sealed by the roof collapse, illuminated by the unextinguished light of a safety lamp.
At the same time, gazing through the safety lamp’s light—brighter now than ever before—he saw with spellbinding clarity the crimson threads of blood crawling down from his shoulders along his lashes. To Fukutarō’s eyes, they appeared indescribably beautiful, a thing to be grateful for.
Moreover, seeing those crimson threads—quivering and trembling as they began to clot, laden with countless specks of debris—it became clear that what Fukutarō had perceived as a momentary blackout must have lasted a considerable length of time. Yet even so, no helping hands had yet approached the coal cars; all around lay a deathly world, still and breathless.
And so Fukutarō, sealed within that space, felt as though he himself had become a living sculpture or mummy—utterly incapable of stirring any emotion or nerve, merely staring wide-eyed and clenching his jaw for what seemed an eternity.

However, just as Fukutarō thought that dead-like space before his eyes—shifting between yellow brightness and pallid dimness—was silently sweeping through infinite time and space, he saw two or so black shadows begin writhing out from beneath the coal car on his right with its wheel suspended in midair.
And as those shadows soon took on the appearance of human hands—ugly as a crab’s claws, rigidly splayed—next, from between those hands emerged a closely cropped head caked in dust, swaying gently like a black sun.

Those hands and head shifted quietly left and right beneath the coal car, appearing to struggle desperately.
At long last, the cuffs of a military shirt with blue stripes and the back of a workman’s coat bearing a large ‘┐’ shop emblem became half-visible. Then, slowly rearing up and arching backward, they thrust their face right before Fukutarō’s nose—half-buried in soil—with deliberate slowness.

That was Genji’s convulsively twisted face.
Smeared with sweat and soil……

Yet Fukutarō couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle—couldn’t even move a single eyeball.
Enveloped in supernatural terror that left him unable to discern whether he lived or died, he could only feel his entire body tightening like ice—joint by inexorable joint.

Genji stared fixedly into Fukutarō’s frozen pupils and for a time remained as motionless as Fukutarō himself—not so much as twitching an eyebrow.
Then across his sweat-and-mud-caked reddish-black face rose wrinkles like an old man’s, maintaining an expression caught between weeping and laughter—until at last from between his twisted thin lips he bared a full set of yellowed teeth, spreading an unbearably gratified sneer across every inch of his features.
Then with spiteful resentment… yet unmistakable glee… he thrust out his chin and began to speak.

Not only were those words completely voiceless, but because his lips moved at an excruciatingly slow pace, they appeared as nothing more than meaningless facial contortions. Yet to Fukutarō, their meaning came through with uncanny clarity.

“Do you get it… I’m… Genji… Do you get it… Ah… Ah… Ah…”

Fukutarō felt a slight urge to nod at that moment.
Yet his entire body remained rigid—he couldn’t so much as blink.

“Ah… Ah… Do you get it… You… made me swallow shame… But you… never knew… what sort of man I am… Ah…”

“……………”

“That’s why… That’s why…”

Cutting off his words, Genji kept his eyes glaring white and exposed, slowly biting his lips as he gulped down the bestial drool streaming from his mouth.
Seeing this, Fukutarō reflexively tried to swallow his own saliva in imitation, but his lower jaw had stiffened like stone—he couldn’t even budge the tip of his tongue.

“That’s why… That’s why…”

Genji moved his lips again as if gasping for air.

"That's why... I've given you your last rites... To think I killed you... It was me, yours truly... Ah... Ah..."

“……………”

“Osaku… is mine now… Watch from the afterlife, you… what I’ll do… to Osaku…”

……………

“Haa… haa… Look… at this state…”

As he spoke, Genji once again pressed his lips tightly together.
Then he made the whites of his eyes glisten like a fish’s, puffed out his mud-caked cheeks like rubber balloons, and with his tongue’s tip thickly pushed out a gray phlegm flecked with coal dust before his lips.
With a puff, he blew the mist of scattered saliva directly into Fukutarō’s face from point-blank range.

In that instant, Fukutarō thought he had involuntarily blinked… or so it seemed… but as this happened, his entire body was suddenly seized by an unbearable shiver, and the pain in his head swelled to a splitting intensity—forcing him to wrench his eyes wide open once more and fix a fierce glare on Genji’s face hovering before his nose.
Then, almost simultaneously, Fukutarō noticed that the rocky protrusions forming the backdrop to Genji’s spiky chestnut-burr head—which had been glaring at him—had vanished without a trace, replaced instead by the new pine-plank ceiling of his own home, illuminated in the crimson glow of the lamp.
And then, from all around Genji’s hatred-filled face bathed in the lamplight’s backglow, countless men’s and women’s faces overlapped and emerged—their gazes watching his face with concern now unmistakably clear.

……That was the moment.

A tumultuous uproar of voices erupted around him, and Fukutarō snapped back to his senses.

Before his eyes lay Genji, face down in his workman’s coat emblazoned with a large ‘┐’ shop emblem, a stream of fresh blood oozing thickly from the smashed pomegranate-like side of his spiky chestnut head, steadily creeping across the tatami mats as it absorbed the lamplight.

Looking around left and right, all the people who had been nearby remained frozen mid-retreat—their pallid faces drawn taut as they stared up at Fukutarō—with two or three among them spattered across face and limbs with blood.

Fukutarō remained dazed as he gazed around at the scene for some time, but then turned curiously to look at his own figure standing there by Genji’s head.

When he looked, not only his arms but the white yukata from his chest to his shoulders was soaked in backspatter, and he felt his entire face was spattered with droplets as well.
And in his right hand—though he had no memory of retrieving it—he gripped tightly the large Yamakichi-brand iron hammer, most prized among the carpenter’s tools in the closet behind him. From its bluish-black tip hung two or three strands of dark blood, dangling like seaweed.

As Fukutarō gazed blankly around at the scene, he finally seemed to grasp with clarity what he had done.
And he tried to think why he had done such a thing, but being utterly unable to recollect the sequence of events, he once again darted his eyes around the room.
At that moment, Osaku came clattering out from behind the lamp and clung desperately to Fukutarō as though about to collide with him; smoothing back her disheveled hair—all traces of drunkenness now vanished—she forced out a half-sobbing voice.

“You—! What’ve you done—?!”

Then, as if prompted by this, five or six men came thudding over to Fukutarō and seized his arms and shoulders with their hands.

“What the hell happened?”

“What the hell happened?”

“What’s happened?!”

However, Fukutarō couldn’t reply.
Even regarding Genji’s head now sprawled before his eyes, he couldn’t clearly determine whether he himself had smashed it.
And instead of that splitting headache and unbearable full-body chills he’d felt until moments before—now vanished without trace—he felt that indescribably pleasant, buoyant drunkenness surge through his entire body once more, swelling thickly, until unconsciously slumping back, he let the bloodied hammer clatter onto the tatami. With filthy hands, he pulled Osaku closer while gazing up at the ceiling.

“Hahaha… It’s nothing… Ahahahahaha…”